The Best Games of 2017 So Far

'Outlast 2'

The original Outlast trapped its camera-operating protagonist inside a mental asylum, but the sequel embraced the great outdoors. It followed a different journalist (with a more expensive night-vision camera) through rural Arizona, chased through corn fields and down long roads in the dark. It was deliberately disorienting, both spatially and thematically, visiting so much strangeness on you it was hard to tell what was supposed to be hallucination and what was real. Religious imagery blurred with sexual imagery to unsettling effect, and Outlast 2 almost wasn't released in Australia due to its depiction of these themes. Even jaded horror fans found the deaths grotesque, as members of two rival cults with equally extreme interpretations of the Bible killed you over and over in inventive ways. Turned out that in 2017 it's still possible to shock both players and the Australian Classification Board if you just go far enough. Outlast 2 went all the way.